A Word About the British Monarchy

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The birth of a great-grandson to Queen Elizabeth made me do some math.

The Queen is 87. If the new baby were to rule as King of England until that age, the year would be 2100. That is 146 years after the Queen ascended to the throne herself.

To bring a bit of perspective to those numbers, 146 years before Elizabeth II became queen, the year was 1806. The king was George III, monarch during the American Revolution, who died that year.

Even by British, and British monarchical, standards, these are impressive measures of historical continuity. And they are impressive measures of the Queen’s long service to her country. No doubt she wishes this new baby can rule as long, and bring the monarchy as far into its future, as she has done–and it is hard not to sympathize with her, after 61 years on the throne.

I’ve met you several times at various AIPAC events and am a follower of your work. I was curious about your opinion of the NY Times piece “What Future for Israel”. Do you think the NY Times represented the information in “Tested by Zion” fairly or do you think they used your book to selectively pick excerpts in order to manipulate the article and paint Israel in a negative light?

Thanks for all your terrific contributions. If you have time to write about this I am sure your readers will gobble it up!

Posted by Elliott AbramsJuly 25, 2013 at 8:44 am

Thank you. Do you mean the New York Review of Books, which had a recent review article that included Tested by Zion? If so, I thought it was fair. I don’t agree with the authorf the article on many things, but I thought he was respectful of my book. His main error, it seemed to me, was to concentrate on what he saw as Israeli shortcomings, while paying no attention to Palestinian errors or failures. That seemed to me unbalanced.

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Pressure Points tracks developments in the Middle East and democratization and human rights issues globally.

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